Much has been researched, written,
read and taught about leadership and authority. Experts
have classified leadership depending on the approach adopted. Types of
leadership and levels of authority enjoyed notwithstanding, everyone, including
those at the very end of the chain wish to rise in hierarchy. Inevitably
everyone, in due course, gets to be entrusted positionally with authority.
While methodology of exercising authority is personality driven, effectiveness
of leadership depends on how subordinates receives it.
Superiors, irrespective of realm and reach, yearn for unquestioned
acceptance, wholehearted adherence, enthusiastic compliance and unfathomable
respect. But, history bears testimony to the fact that different individuals
occupying the same position of authority over the same chain, evoke dissimilar
responses in terms of acceptance, adherence, compliance, relevance and reverence.
Are all superiors leaders?
Superiors
Since functional
hierarchy is unavoidable for an organisation’s survival, everyone in the chain
would either be superior or subordinate to someone else in the chain. Simplistically put,
anyone ahead in the chain of hierarchy becomes superior and those below
subordinate. Anybody, regardless of personal qualities, can become a superior
in the chain of hierarchy and superiors enjoy ‘positional authority’. In order
to ensure viability of the hierarchy, legal obligations on adherence to
directions of superiors are invariably built into the system. Transgression of
positional authority thus risks liabilities and creation of obstacles to one’s
forward movement within the hierarchy.
Leaders
Leadership is
all about people, their values and aspirational goals. It is the noncoercive
ability of an individual to compel or motivate those around him to accept his
ideology and perception so as to synergise their thought and action in
convergence with his. It is a ‘soft power’ that an individual wields over others. There is something in a leader that evokes the nature of subordination
witnessed. Scholars often attribute it to charisma. Real leadership
charisma comes through competency and ability to irrefutably place others’ interests
much before one’s own.
Human
beings, though social, are selfish in nature. People willingly surrender autonomy
of their thought and action to another individual only when their individual
aspirations are really or seemingly furthered, even if it is in the long term. Individuals
become leaders when others, individually and collectively, continually transfer
autonomy of thought and action to that individual. An
individual capable of motivating those around him to willingly surrender
autonomy of thoughts and accept the resultant agentic state commands authority
of leadership.
Authority
Authority is the ‘right’ of an individual
to exercise powers conferred upon him and enforce compliance of his directions by
those placed under him. Hierarchical and constitutional positions come with
prescribed authority and everyone subordinate to such authority is normally
aware of the limits of such authority.
There are instances of individuals, normally
referred to as despots, wielding unlimited authority. Though propaganda
machines endlessly hail them as great leaders, they are not. They subordinate
masses through repressive regimes. Such subordination ceases when kernels of
dissent, over time, become storms of resistance that blows away oppression.
Positional
authority enjoyed by superiors dictates and demands allegiance and adherence.
However, superiors’ area of influence remains restricted to functional and
geographical limits prescribed by the organisational structure. Subordinates
eventually accept positional authority only where such position is of relevance
and only as long as it suits their interests.
Authority that stems from leadership transcends positional
authority and breaks organisational barriers. Unlike the authority granted by position, authority from leadership
is normally conferred by the very same people who have invested their faith and
allegiance to that individual's leadership. Authority wielded by a leader is
personal, voluntarily ceded by followers and therefore the least resented. Authority inherent to leadership that evokes willing subordination of
the masses is sublimely different. Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and
Nelson Mandela are glowing examples where masses willingly accepted agentic
state granting them unassailable authority. Even adversaries had to cede ground.
The Choice: Superior or Leader?
Modern markets do not offer much space and time for experimentation. Cost
of investments that bleed organisations and uncertainty of market dynamics necessitate
ruthless policies to push up bottom lines, decimate competitors and reap
profits, fastest and earliest. HR assets, for most
managements, happen to be just another element of the complex matrix, that must be exploited towards
profitability.
Faced with unnerving
turbulence, organisations opt to pack its hierarchy with ‘superiors’ known to set
stiff targets and flog their team to achieve the impossible. They don't
hesitate even to poach even from their own competitors. These individuals, focused
on devising means, right or wrong, to manoeuvre earnings, may through stick and
carrot elicit compliance and adherence. But they are the least of leaders. They
may succeed, short term, but they inspire neither their subordinates nor
superiors. Sooner than later, they lose out to smarter ones who device faster,
meaner methods to push up bottom lines.
Attrition, of the team they work in and of themselves, normally consumes
this breed. They impede organisational growth.
Leaders on the
other hand command allegiance of those around, eliciting performances beyond
what even their followers think they are capable of. They forge unity within the team and instill a
strong sense of belonging. It does not mean that ‘leaders’ cannot be aggressive
and will not be able to achieve short-term targets. With every follower, considering
himself a stakeholder for success or failure, probability of success far
outweighs that of a failure. Success under a leader lasts longer for an
organisation than the gains made by a flogging superior.
Organisations are faceless, deaf, dumb and
mute entities. Life, nature and culture of an organisation
comes from its people. It makes good business sense to staff organisations with
people for whom success of the organisation is seen as their own.
Leaders alone
can make that happen. It makes sense to invest in grooming leaders rather than creating
superiors.
